So why is George Wallace largely forgotten? This is a man who caught the drift a half-century ago. Then, making the most of it, he reigned as Alabama's governor for 16 years (plus a couple more with wife Lurleen as his stand-in).

All his life, he mirrored, and personified, the South's painful journey through the 20th century.

But his impact reached far beyond Dixie. He ran for president four times, and in his 1968 third-party bid, nearly deadlocked the election. He paved the way for presidents as varied as peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and states' rights advocate Ronald Reagan.

He helped shape the political landscape for today and the foreseeable future.

Clearly, Wallace is worth remembering. And in the midst of the current presidential campaign when the propriety of flying the Confederate flag over the South Carolina capitol somehow turns into a high-voltage issue now is a great moment for "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire."

Producers Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler and writer Steve Fayer ("Eyes on the Prize") have shaped the Wallace saga seamlessly from archival footage and abundant interviews (including his grown children and second wife, Cornelia), underlaid with an evocative folk-music score by Mason Daring and Duke Levine.

"It's the story of a young man trying to do right," says narrator Randy Quaid in a confiding tone "and of a devil's bargain to achieve power."

Fascinated with politics from childhood, Wallace began public service with progressive, even liberal, resolve. In his first elected office (as representative in the Alabama legislature), he meant to be a rural-populist David battling Goliath in the name of the state's downtrodden.

But to safeguard his ambitions, he increasingly exploited handy conflicts between regions, social classes and, of course, races, as he railed against a convenient enemy: the "integratin', scalawaggin', carpetbaggin' liars" who dared to tell good people how to live.

Wallace refined if that's the right word the art of "backlash politics." As the nation's attention focused on the civil rights struggle, he flew to the defense of those alarmed by the changes that might result.

And he proved a master at using the media, particularly television, to get his message across.

As a practical matter, Wallace was wasting his time in June 1963 when he attempted to bar two black students from entering the University of Alabama. But newsreel footage of his face-off with the Feds at "the schoolhouse door" earned this first-term governor the national exposure he craved and the cheers of his growing constituency.

All in all, Wallace was a charismatic scrapper, a former bantamweight Golden Gloves champ whose personal style is captured in a country song that gives the film its title and serves as its refrain: "You act proud and I'll act prouder,/ You sing loud and I'll sing louder./ Settin' the woods on fire!"

Years later, of course, Wallace would pay a terrible price for his cockiness, his loudness, his combustiblecelebrity. During a promising bid for the presidency in 1972, he was gunned down in Maryland by a twisted loner aiming to make a name for himself by killing someone anyone famous.

But Wallace wasn't killed. Denied the instant glory of martyrdom, he instead was paralyzed by this attention-seeker's bullets. His national aspirations shattered, he was left in pain, declining health and increasing isolation.

And, apparently, also left in a fever to repent. The final quarter-century of his life, Wallace waged a personal campaign for redemption. He pleaded for forgiveness from his old enemies, one by one.

"It was almost like a confession, like I was his priest," recalls John Lewis, now a U.S. congressman who as a civil rights activist in 1965 had been among the "Bloody Sunday" marchers beaten by Wallace's state troopers in Selma, Ala. "He kept saying to me, 'John, I don't hate anybody."'

In 1982, Wallace won his fourth term for governor from his wheelchair. The black community he had courted, and ended up serving, proved crucial to his victory.

George Corley Wallace died just 19 months ago, at age 79. Among those who remembered him from his days as a conservative firebrand, many were probably surprised at the news; they'd forgotten he was still alive.

The film says he "launched a conservative movement that transformed the country." And yet Wallace, now scorned or dismissed, resides in history's nether world. He is, in the words of Wallace biographer Dan Carter, "the invisible founding father."

In "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire," the invisible is there for all to see.